Council wants more detail on donated police LAV

Questions raised about the identity of the donor and maintenance costs

City council will be sending a letter to the Peterborough Police Services Board to ask who anonymously donated a lightarmoured vehicle (LAV) to the service, what the ongoing maintenance costs will be for the LAV and how much it will cost to eventually replace it.

Peterborough Police recently accepted an anonymously donated LAV.

Coun. Dean Pappas made the motion under new business at a committee meeting late on Monday night because he wants details.

Pappas said he wants to know who made the donation, for example, since it’s not listed on the police website.

Pappas also noted that the city will be on the hook to maintain the LAV and to eventually replace it, so he’d like to know those costs.

“I think those are fair questions — and the citizens want the answers,” he said.

The Examiner received several letters to the editor about the topic after police announced in June it was accepting the donation, with many citizens writing

that it’s unnecessary to have a LAV in Peterborough and others supporting the need for it.

The police board also received letters from citizens concerned that a LAV is a step toward militarization of police.

But Coun. Lesley Parnell didn’t see it that way on Monday.

“This is a very generous gift to city police to protect us. This is not a weapon that will be used against us,” she said.

“It’s very unfortunate this donation has become so political. If the donor wants to be anonymous, we have to respect that. It’s from his or her goodwill.

“It is a gift, we should not be alarmed ... I don’t really understand why Coun. Pappas brought this up.”

Parnell was one of just two councillors who voted against asking the police board for more information. The other opposing vote came from Coun. Henry Clarke, a former police board member.

Clarke said he received training in what city council can ask of police and what it cannot ask — and council has no say in exactly how police chooses to spend its budget.

If Pappas wanted more information, Clarke said, he should have asked Coun. Gary Baldwin, the police board chair, in a phone call.

“This is not the proper venue,” Clarke said.

Baldwin said he could have told Pappas that the police board doesn’t list donations on its website because donations are discussed in closed session.

Baldwin also said Pappas ought to know council has no input on individual item costs for police — and if he didn’t know, he should have asked Baldwin instead of bringing it up the way he did in a meeting.

But Pappas said that as an elected official, he has every right to bring out concerns in open sessions — and that he felt that in the interest of transparency he’d bring forward his question in public rather than in a private phone conversation.